It's good, but not awesome. It (almost) never gets tutored up. If you stick it early, you use it to disrupt players by tutoring up Vampire Hexmage/Qasali Pridemage. If you get it late, you use it to set up the Emeria engine and Anger. It's definitely not as good as survival usually is, but it plays a role. I guess it could be something else, but then you're down to Entomb and Last Stand as ways to discard anger. I suppose Survival could be cut for something like Cephalid Coliseum, that helps you dig for answers and lets you set up anger/emeria tricks, but I think Survival fits the slot better.

Dave

06-14-2010, 01:43 PM

What I like to play in five-colored EDH is Sunforger + all the charms (5 from planeshift and 5 from Shards of Alara). This gives you an answer to ANYTHING.

Lavalanche helps, too.

The Bringers of Blue and Black Dawn are just awesome.

And maybe Eladamri´s call (which, by the way, also fits into sunforger)

Hope you find something useful :)

Atwa

06-14-2010, 03:37 PM

This might be considered blasphemy, but would playing a 5 color general not be better if you are actually able to cast it?

Now I get it isn't the prime focus for your list, but I'd rather play Cromat (or any other 5c general) over Prog, since it enables you the same colors, but it's also a lot easier to cast if you ever need a badass beast into play.

Just saying.

94teen

06-14-2010, 03:49 PM

Progenitus gets cast on a regular basis, and wrecks people when it happens.

Just including Rafiq/Anger in the deck means that you can easily set up situations where progenitus comes down and one-shots someone. Cromat is cheaper, but all of its abilities are really mana intensive. The deck has enough things to pay for, and so I'd prefer to have the general be a sure-thing win condition that gives you a TON of inevitability. Unless the wrath progenitus 5 or more times, odds are you can recast it in the late game. Crucible and Life from the Loam + fetchlands mean that you're going to get up to 12-15 mana sources pretty consistently by around the 10th turn or so.

It also means you get free activations of Mosswort Bridge, and it's pretty awesome to kill people with progenitus. The deck would have to be built 4 or 5 cards differently to be a Cromat deck as opposed to a Progenitus deck. Honestly, there's nothing wrong with that, I just prefer progenitus. Especially in a deck that's built to abuse Valakut/Emeria, it's not hard to ramp up to the point that progenitus is a reasonable thing to do.

RexFTW

07-16-2010, 05:24 PM

you may want to try out

debtor's knell
insurrection
rite of replication

if you wanted some cards that just straight up win the game.

SageOwl

07-16-2010, 08:58 PM

pretty sure gift's ungiven is banned....

Hunding Gjornersen

07-17-2010, 08:36 AM

Explosive Vegetation and Skyshroud Claim are both huge ramp cards. I guess you can't run veggies without retooling the mana-base, but Claim can fetch dual- and shock-lands.

fusionshogun

07-18-2010, 06:16 AM

How consistent are Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and Emeria the Sky Ruin? Are you relying too much on Prismatic Omen? I mean, even if you have Vesuva copying Valakut, you can play 8 mountains right? Taiga, Badlands, Volcanic Island, Plateau, Stomping Grounds, Blood Crypt, Steam Vents, and Sacred Foundry. That would equal (8-5)(3)(2), or 18 damage at most. I'm not sure where you're getting 12 damage a turn unless you're suggesting that you've copied Valakut and are holding a bunch of un-cracked fetchlands, which seems like a pretty narrow situation. There is no question of the power of both of these lands, I just think that perhaps you could be better off running a few less lands and more cards like Kodama's Reach or any of the Signets.

94teen

07-18-2010, 11:19 PM

I'm glad the deck is getting a little attention; it's one of my favorite decks to play that I've ever built, and it's a blast to play.

Regarding Valakut/Emeria. Emeria I'm not concerned about, as you've got more than enough plains to tutor up to set it up if you have to.

Being concerned about Valakut is a realistic concern. The real question is, what consistency do you lose by playing valakut over something else? Valakut has the potential to be a win condition unto itself. It can and has just won the game for me on multiple occasions. One of the secondary plans of this deck is to tutor up and protect a Prismatic Omen to let you go broken. Worst case, you wait to cast it until you can do something.

The thing that you're missing is Oracle of Mul Daya and Azusa, Lost but Seeking. Late game you can set up valakut/vesuva, drop azusa into play with LftL or Crucible of Worlds. Ignoring Prismatic omen, that represents 12-18 damage. With prismatic omen, it's 24-36, more than enough to kill a few players. The real thing is, all of the pieces are awesome on their own, and if you can go broken with them, awesome, if not, you're not really losing anything.

I don't think Gifts was banned when I posted the list. I'm still playing it, but that's mostly because my group is okay with it, since most times it's a second copy of Realms Uncharted. If I had to cut it, I'd probably add Cephalid Coliseum instead. I'd be a little concerned about actually reaching threshold, but it should be fine.

On the manabase. It's been retooled a little (not too much). The reason I run so many lands and so few artifact and typical ramp spells is a style thing. Personally, I want to up the land count because it makes more hands keepable up front and lets you draw out of hands that are light on lands. The other thing is that you can play lands that function as spells like Maze of Ith, valakut, emeria, etc. I don't play spells like Kodama's Reach because I don't want to play basics. I don't play artifact ramp because that means I have to start cutting duals/shocks or utility lands, which I really don't want to do. Artifact ramp is like dual lands that don't have land types, which are important to this style of deck.

The ramp I do play is awesome because it can get any land. Reap and Sow and Wargate are two of the best spells in the deck because they can set up your Valakut/Emeria engine. Azusa and Oracle both play off of your high land count. And honestly, the deck is really a Crucible of Worlds/Prismatic Omen deck more than anything else. You trade removal for their stuff until you can set up some kind of absurd engine, and protect it with your limited countermagic.

On the suggested cards:

Skyshroud Claim seems like it could be fine. I might have to give it a shot if I can find some space.

Insurrection doesn't really fit in the deck. I want to keep the board as empty as possible as often as possible, so hopefully Insurrection won't have too much to do. If there are a lot of token decks, I could see running it, but against the control decks I'm so used to seeing, it seems sub par.

Debtor's Knell was in the deck, and got cut for Emeria. I could see adding Knell again, but Crystal Shard is currently eating up that slot (testing something to see how it goes). Rite of Replication targeting what? I don't want to cast something like that once. I want to reuse Eternal Witness or w/e as many times as I want ala Crystal Shard or Emeria, not all at once.

The deck has undergone pretty considerable changes, but the base is the same. I'll edit the post quickly. The problem is that a lot of the slots change up really often, which is part of why I love the deck. Honestly, this deck is my "Danger of Cool Things" deck. Anything that seems awesome or ridiculous, I can play it for a couple of games and have a blast with it.

EDIT:

Some comments on the updated list above. There are about 10 slots or so that I call "flex slots" which shuffle between about 40 cards that I have on hand depending on how I'm feeling before a given game. In this deck the flex slots are something like...

Sword of the Meek
Thopter Foundry

Crystal Shard
Mulldrifter
Harmonic Sliver

Quicken
Naya Charm
Terastodon
Cephalid Coliseum
Maze of Ith

here are some thing I'd be interested in hearing about:

Is Cruel Ultimatum good enough? What about Conflux? I almost wish that conflux was something like Flow of Ideas or something that proactively generates card advantage rather than just tutoring for 5 cards.

Here's some cards/packages that I want to test or that get cycled in and out of the deck.

Exploration in addition to/in place of Azusa
Horizon Canopy

Skullclamp (How good is this with only Avenger, Last Stand and Thopter/Sword generating 1 power guys?)

Nomad Stadium
Sanguine Bond
Replenish

Primeval Titan
Skyshroud Claim

Brilliant Ultimatum

Sharuum, the Hegemon
Bringer of the White Dawn
Sculpting Steel
Pentavus
-I really want to play this kind of package, but I really feel like there isn't enough to do with it besides Mind Slaver or Sharuum Infinites

Hunding Gjornersen

07-21-2010, 12:08 PM

Unless you need to kill artifacts or enchantments early in the game, I suggest replacing Harmonic Sliver with Woodfall Primus. Primus is just bigger and kills more stuff. Also in the spirit of increasing utility, you could swap Putrefy and Mortify for Maelstrom Pulse and Vindicate. The downgrade from instant to sorcery shouldn't be too bad since this is "Tap-Out Control."

94teen

07-21-2010, 06:46 PM

Pulse and Vindicate are missing purely due to budget constraints. Harmonic sliver was only in for Crystal Shard tricks, since it works better than Primus for that purpose, and also serves to disrupt artifact/enchantment engines in the early game, which has been pretty key.

I ran Primus for the longest time, and then cut him for being too slow. by the time he does come down, he's underwhelming. Angel of Despair does the same thing, but better.